ten rounds around the ring (keep fighting)
by TolkienGirl
Summary: Thing is, Billy knows he's a failure. (Gen, Riggins brothers, Season 1).


Thing is, Billy knows he a failure. Tim is more than a failure—Tim's a goddamn catasphrophe. Trouble is, he never acknowledges it. Just shoulders onward, plays drunk, wins drunk, and never tips his head up.

 _You coulda been someone,_ Billy wants to say. Does say, sometimes, when he's a little maudlin, a little chatty. _You could still be someone, 'stead of just a damn waste of space, Tim._

And Tim says nothing, because Tim is an expert at saying nothing. Just looks at him or looks away—doesn't matter which, really—with those cat-eyes, green eyes, eyes that their mother gave him.

.

Billy's gut hangs a little over the edge of his battered jeans. His chin's a bit weak. His eyes are his father's, but he ain't got that mean streak of Walt Riggins. Billy takes after neither of his parents—or so he hopes. They were leavers, not clingers. And he's a clingy bastard; every girlfriend's ever said so. Hell, Tyra as much says so when he spills all that crap about a long-gone mother and the back-porch drinking and the silence and the empty spaces.

Tim never says any of that. Tim takes after their mother, gold-green eyes and that godawful stillness that settles in the lines of his face sometimes. Tim takes after Walt, too, with those nasty little digs and the easy, wicked charm that spills out, spills over, in a way Billy can only contemplate and copy.

But Billy loves Tim. And neither of their parents were quite good enough at that.

.

Tyra Collette is the best and worst thing that's ever happened to his brother this side of Peewee Football. She's a little bit of _Maxim_ madness, traipsing over their house in one of Tim's flannels and long bare legs, and Billy's a red-blooded man so he appreciates that. Sure, he could live without his little brother being the one to live the dream of every washed-up Texan footballer right in front of his nose, but Tyra ain't all legs. She's got a brain too, and a sharp tongue, and she calls them both on their crap that annoys Billy to no end but makes him a bit grateful, too. Tim's more than a one-man job.

The voice in the back of Billy's mind says that every kid's more than a one-man job, so was Billy, same as Tim, but they drew a bad lot from the parental roulette and there's nothing to be done about that.

.

Football, Tyra, and Jason Street. These are the things that keep Tim's life together, until everything falls apart.

And then it's just Billy, the backbone of everything, the framework of a broken family, to put everything back together.

Trouble is, he doesn't much know how.

.

He only knows this: that it's better for Tim to drink beer at home than to be sneaking into bars. It's better for Tim to have a brother to fight with than to just shift for himself. It's better for him to settle for Billy's failures than to run and go looking for Walt's.

But Tim doesn't take advice from anyone, least of all Billy.

Before Tim leaves, Billy presses the roll of twenties into his brother's hand. Tim has several inches and quite a few pounds of hard muscle on him, but somehow Billy's eyes are blurring when he watches him drive away.

Right then, Tim doesn't look that old or that tall, or like anything except his baby brother.

.

Tim didn't cry much as a baby. Quiet, like he always is, eyes big in a small face, and Billy used to wonder how he knew already what it took Billy years to learn: whining didn't get you much in the Riggins house.

Tim was a quiet baby, and a dirty, scrappy kid. Fist-fights and grade-school detention and a blank, hard stare when Billy came back to find him alone in the house.

.

Dad left Tim in the wind. Sick son of a bitch, Billy thinks, though when he got the call from Social Services, he got hammered the night before he drove back.

He didn't want to go. But he did. He did, and hell, he's not a parent. He's a brother, and a failure, but at least he's _here_.

 _Two checks in six years._

 _Two checks in six years._

And who's there, day in and day out? Sure as hell ain't Dad, off in Corpus Christi, or Mom, off in God-knows-where.

But Tim never covers for Billy, never says, _he's working hard_ , never says much at all other than to start a fight or sneer out the side of his mouth or stare at him, hard and blank.

But Billy loves Tim. And that's enough, it has to be, because these days there isn't anyone else lining up.


End file.
